The girls are all either at church or at their friend’s house and I have the TV and the computer to myself. Plus, there’s very little, no… there’s no Arsenal news. Fox Soccer Channel is playing the Man U/A. Villa match and it’s looking like a pretty good match; 1-1 at the 30th minute.

Here in a bit, I’ve got a 10:30 kick around, I have new boots (the $20 Telstar’s arrived), and it’s supposed to get to 65F in Tacoma today.

I think I’m going to take it easy today, play a couple hours of football and have a pint after!

There is a bit of Villareal news ahead of the match Tuesday. I might as well get that over to you. First, I was reading this article about Robert Pires and how he still hasn’t gotten over being subbed in the 18th minute of Arsenal’s Champions League final loss to Barcelona. Anyway, Robert is being classy about it all but you can tell that something’s seething in there about the way the whole thing played out: subbed out in the final, offered just the 1 year contract that all 30 year-olds are offered at Arsenal, and never really recapturing the glory he had at Arsenal. It’s sure to be hard.

Anyway, uhhh, oh yeah… in that article, Wenger talks up the attacking threat of Pires on one wing and Cazorla on the other. Which is true, when healthy they are a threat. Too bad Cazorla is out for the rest of the season. Villareal are going to have Senna back, though, and that is a pretty big boost, but I liked the coincidence of Wenger talking up one of Villareal’s players and having him come up injured.

I like having Senna back in their team, who better to really test the mettle of our burgeoning midfield duo than a true craftsman like Senna?

Right, that’s all I’m writing today. I’ll hang out in the comments until about 10am (local time) if you want to chat about something.

I am pumped about it. No more annoying NBA scores on the scroll, no more announcers calling the game from a cave in Bristol (FSC is going to use UEFA’s announcer feed, similar to what they do for EPL matches), and FSC is going to launch hi-def later this year, so we won’t lose out on quality.

Plus UEFA is the moving the final to Saturday, which is awesome.

Now I just need a good excuse to get out of work on Tuesday for the 1st leg…

I’d rather have ESPN do the broadcasts; they have multiple channels which means more than one live game on per day (so, like Tuesday’s matches are live on ESPN2 and on ESPN Deportes), AND ESPN shows at least one match in HD.